1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle for aerial working for supporting an aerial platform, and more particularly a vehicle, having a lift mechanism for supporting an aerial platform in a vertically and sidewardly movable fashion, which is suited especially for work on soft ground such as an orchard field.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A known vehicle for aerial working includes an extendable arm rotatably supported by a base on a chassis of the vehicle, and an aerial platform supported on a distal end of the arm, in which the arm is extended or folded and/or rotated under the control of an operator on the platform so as to locate the platform at a desired point in the air.
The vehicle of this type has a drawback in that as the arm is raised to increase its height, the equilibrium of the machine body tends to become unstable, particularly in a transverse direction thereof. Therefore, such conventional vehicle needs to have at least one pair of outriggers disposed outwardly of opposite sides thereof and each having a presser foot at its distal end. The presser foot is adapted to firmly engage the ground surface so as to support the vehicle firmly to thereby establish a stable equilibrium in the transverse direction of the vehicle.
When such prior vehicle is operated on soft ground e.g. an orchard field for picking fruits off tall trees, it becomes disadvantageous in that the presser foot of the outrigger at one side of the vehicle is likely to sink into the ground or otherwise to damage a root of the tree appearing near the ground surface.
The outrigger itself disadvantageously weighs much due to its heavy mechanism such as a hydraulic power unit, thus resulting in that the machine having the outriggers becomes as a whole too heavy to operate on such soft ground as the orchard field.